Multi-family property owners and condominium associations often face substantial costs for consumption of water and electricity by tenants or unit owners, and seek to control that cost by allocating the cost of the consumption to individual tenants or owners according to their individual use.
Unfortunately, determining consumption of energy and water is difficult. Although a consumer or business may receive a general bill for services once a month from a utility, the bill does not typically indicate how or when the energy or natural resource was consumed by individual users. Further, consumers and businesses are typically unaware of the specific activities of tenants or unit owners that consume energy and natural resource consumption. To resolve this issue owners or managers typically install submetering meters between the water or electrical supply and each individual unit, so that individual consumption can be monitored and billed appropriately.
Unfortunately, the manual reading of submeters can be an arduous task, particularly if the submeters are installed in an inconvenient location or are difficult to read as installed.
To facilitate meter reading, “smart meters” have been introduced; these accumulate a count of consumption through the meter and report that count electronically, typically through a radio frequency wireless transmission to a collecting site. However, these meters are typically intended for entire buildings and not individual rental or condominium units. To date, there have been few products that attempt to provide smart meter functionality to “submetering” applications. These products are typically a completely proprietary solution, integrating a transmitter of custom design into the housing of a submeter. Because these devices are proprietary and involve a custom electronics design, they have been expensive and have not been widely adopted.
One alternative solution which has been used by the present applicant, is to adopt a standard transmitter electronics board, such as the Innovonics EN1501-EXT “Pulse Counting Transmitter for Integration”, for use with a submetering meter. For this application, the applicant has sold the EN1501-EXT, along with an external plastic housing for holding the EN1501-EXT, and a clip having zip ties. The installer installs a battery in the EN1501-EXT to power its transmitter, pairs the transmitter to a controller, and then places the transmitter in the housing and uses the clip to strap the housing to the submetering meter or a nearby pipe. Wires are then run from the connectors on the EN1501-EXT board to connections inside the meter.
A disadvantage to the solution just described is that it is cumbersome to install, involves multiple parts, and requires the use of zip ties and wiring inside of the metering closet. The presence of zip tied parts and wires in particular makes the installation potentially subject to vandalism; the meter may be disconnected from the transmitter simply by clipping a wire that is external to the meter and transmitter housing, and further, the transmitter itself may be cut from the housing and removed. Although the EN1501-EXT includes a “tamper detection” feature, which immediately notifies a central controller in the case of a tampering event, this feature uses an on-board switch that only detects the opening of the housing; it does not detect, for example, cutting of the wires connecting the EN1501-EXT board to the meter, nor does it detect the removal of the EN1501-EXT along with its housing as a unit.
Accordingly, there is a need for a meter usable for submetering applications that incorporates a smart meter/electronic reading functionality, which does not require the use of proprietary or expensive parts and thus is more widely adoptable in cost-sensitive applications. Furthermore, there is a need for a meter incorporating a smart meter/electronic reading functionality which is not subject to tampering by the cutting of external wires, and which provides tamper detection functions which more meaningfully protect the electronic system from vandalism than is accomplished in the installations described in the previous paragraph.